The ACC meetings were important for various reasons, although there wasn't earth-shattering change that occurred during last week's event in Amelia Island, Florida:

Coaches showed their hands with satellite camps, which are now legal in the ACC, and Clemson's Dabo Swinney made headlines by standing against the idea of evaluating recruits away from campuses.

There will be a new central command center for instant replay in football, which was welcomed by the coaches.

North Carolina's controversial House Bill 2, a law that prevents transgender people from using the restroom they identify with gender-wise, was brought up at the ACC meetings. The league released a statement against the law, and conference commissioner John Swofford said the ACC could chose to move the football championship game if the law isn't repealed. However, there was nothing exactly concrete on the matter.

Finally, there was the ongoing matter of a 24-hour ACC network, or lack of one.

The league Commish offered much of the same rhetoric as before: Nothing is imminent. If you think you've heard Swofford say something similar in the past, it's because you have.

"I know that you have a job to do," Swofford said to reporters Thursday at ACC meetings. "And I respect that and I know you're tired of hearing me consistently say the same old sound bites in regard to this particular subject. So I thought maybe you'd just want to pull up your previous tweets and stories and do a little pasting and save us some time on comments about an ACC channel. I'm kidding, sort of. No, I don't really have anything to add to that."

The ACC is one of just two leagues (the Big 12 is the other, although Texas has its own channel) from the Power 5 that doesn't possess its own lucrative network.

The ACC desperately needs one. Swofford and the league's athletic directors aren't blind to that at all. They're around $200 million behind the SEC in total revenue, and much of that is due to the difference in TV money.

The less Swofford says about talks with ESPN, and he's saying even less now than last summer at ACC Kickoff, the more you wonder if a major deal will ever get done.

Obviously no one expects complete business details from private meetings, but being cryptic isn't easing the nerves of anyone who needs more money to fund their programs and keep up with non-ACC teams across the region.

There are experts who wonder if the bubble has burst on ESPN's advertising cash cow. The network isn't as financially sound as it used to be. Look at all the cuts it's made over the last year. Loss of subscribers to traditional cable offerings is also hurting the four-letter network.

It just might not be a good time to promise the ACC millions upon millions of dollars it may or may not be able to recoup.

"I know it's been talked about for years. Certainly in terms of access and more visibility, I'd love for it to happen," said Clemson men's basketball coach Brad Brownell about an ACC network. "The financial aspects that go into it, I don't know enough about it to know if it's financially the right decision. Obviously the league folks get together with TV to see if whether that's what we need to do or not."

The timing is just bad for the ACC, which needed to get a deal done at least three years ago. It expanded twice to include markets in major metropolitan areas along the Eastern Seaboard, and Notre Dame being a partial member has huge financial advantages, even though that decision might even be holding back a deal.

Swofford says there's no deadline to get something done. He continues saying the conference has to get a deal that fits the league, and he wouldn't comment when asked this week if ESPN would owe the ACC $45 million if an agreement isn't struck at some point.

The future of this league is at stake here. The extra money Big Ten and SEC teams are making matters, and there will come a point when a wider gap will be extremely noticeable when it comes to facilities and competitive salaries for coaches.

Swofford is running out of time when it feels like time is standing still for the ACC, and this is something that just might not ever come to fruition.